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Informist, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026

--HCL Tech: Clients know they must reimagine ops process to reap AI benefits

--CONTEXT: HCL Tech management's comments in post-earnings analyst concall

--HCL Tech: Legacy modernisation will be big opportunity going forward

By Anand JC and Simran Rede

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI – HCL Technologies Ltd. Monday said modernisation and software development life cycle are key growth opportunities for enterprises where the company is seeing strong demand. Further, as projects are scaled up, legacy modernisation using artificial intelligence will emerge as a significant opportunity across most verticals, top executives of the company told analysts in a post-earnings conference call.

"Some verticals are a lot more enterprise ERP (enterprise resource planning) and SaaS (software as a service). A large footprint is around that. But there are certain verticals, financial services, telecom, health care, (which) are all on mostly custom software. I think this will be really a significant opportunity," a top company executive said.

During the December quarter, HCL Tech reported continued momentum for AI-powered solutions, including physical AI, custom silicon engineering, large-scale transformation programmes, and application development and modernisation offerings. These opportunities were seen especially in projects that are linked to the capital expenditure incurred towards artificial intelligence.

"While traditional discretionary spending areas have slowed, opportunities are emerging in newer pockets, like this, in establishing and managing AI infrastructure, where discretionary investments continue. We are performing well here and would see strong growth going forward as well," Managing Director C. Vijayakumar told analysts.

On a consolidated basis for the December quarter, HCL Tech reported a net profit of INR 40.76 billion on a revenue of INR 338.72 billion. "This quarter, we also crossed $15 billion of annualised revenue," Vijayakumar said. "This milestone reflects the scale of our platform and the durability of our growth model. We are executing well on our improvement plan and this disciplined approach has placed us firmly in the right trajectory for the medium term."

The nature of conversations around AI with clients, too, has evolved, according to HCL Tech, as they have now become more holistic and not just about "point solutions". Conversations with clients are now about how they can focus on foundational elements like data and cloud migration, among others.

"This conversation (with clients, about AI) has matured to an extent that clients realise that to really get holistic benefit, they need to kind of completely reimagine their business processes," the managing director said. "So I think once that realisation is there, then the deployment of AI also slows down a little bit because clients want to take a holistic approach."

During the December quarter, HCL Tech had announced a "mega" deal with a global apparel retailer. HCL Tech will serve as the retailer's long-term AI-led technology partner. The total contract value of the deal was $473 million. However, there was no contribution from this deal towards the tech major's finances for the December quarter. "It (the contribution) will start ramping up in the current quarter. And retail is really coming from a number of wins in a couple of large clients, where we have won business in the previous quarters," Vijayakumar said.

The tech major announced its December quarter financial results after market hours. Monday, its shares closed 0.4% higher at INR 1,667.60 on the National Stock Exchange.  End

US$1 = INR 90.15

Edited by Rajeev Pai

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